Collaborate vs. Corroborate

Collaborate

Collaboration occurs when two or more people or organizations work together to realize or achieve a goal. Collaboration is very similar to cooperation. Most collaboration requires leadership, although the form of leadership can be social within a decentralized and egalitarian group. Teams that work collaboratively can obtain greater resources, recognition and reward when facing competition for finite resources.

Structured methods of collaboration encourage introspection of behavior and communication. These various methods specifically aim to increase the success of teams as they engage in collaborative problem solving.

Collaboration is also present in opposing goals exhibiting the notion of adversarial collaboration, though this is not a common case for using the word.

Corroborate

Corroborating evidence (or corroboration) is evidence that supports a proposition already supported by initial evidence, therefore confirming the original proposition. For example, W, a witness, testifies that she saw X drive his automobile into a green car. Meanwhile, Y, another witness, testifies that when he examined X’s car, later that day, he noticed green paint on its fender. There can also be corroborating evidence related to a certain source, such as what makes an author think a certain way due to the evidence that was supplied by witnesses or objects.

Another type of corroborating evidence comes from using the Baconian method, i.e. the method of agreement, method of difference, and method of concomitant variations.

These methods are followed in experimental design. They were codified by Francis Bacon, and developed further by John Stuart Mill and consist of controlling several variables, in turn, to establish which variables are causally connected. These principles are widely used intuitively in various kinds of proofs, demonstrations and investigations, in addition to being fundamental to experimental design.

In law, corroboration refers to the requirement in some jurisdictions, such as in Scotland, that any evidence adduced be backed up by at least one other source (see Corroboration in Scots law).